A Study In Artefacts
by Salamandersaurus Rex
Summary: AU, Warehouse 13/BBC Sherlock crossover. Myka promised herself she would be bored for the entirety of this mandatory holiday, but once you get dragged head first into the crazy crime-solving world of Helena G Wells, even with an eidetic memory the meaning of the word boring becomes very difficult to remember. Two-shot, probably.


AN: I was attempting to push through some writers block and this happened. Bering and Wells/BBC Sherlock crossover loosely based on the episode A Study In Pink. I thought it was a nice break from the angst and pain. Review and let me know what you think.

* * *

Myka Bering arrived in London exactly three weeks after Sam's death.

Dressed in suit pants, a shirt and a smart blue blazer, she watched through her sunglasses as the portly taxi driver struggled to heave her lone, but heavy bag into the cab boot.

"Do you need a hand with that?" She asked, even as he slammed the door shut. He glared at her, face red from exertion and small eyes screaming "you could have bloody offered sooner, yank." Instead he wiped a bead of sweat or two from his brow and said in a thick cockney accent "No, mate."

He didn't seem particularly chatty. Perhaps it was the sun.

Myka gave him the name of the hotel she was to stay at and leaned back in her seat, watching for a while the crowds of people in the streets, the red double decker's in front and behind them, before giving up and closing her eyes.

She hadn't been able to sleep on the plane, instead devoting the eleven hour flight to re-reading Frankenstein for the fourth time, (fifth if you counted when her mother had read it to her as she lay in bed incapacitated with flu at the age of nine.)

She had no luck on the sleeping front now either, although part of her - the part that functioned on coffee and red bull and the three and a quarter hours sleep she'd snatched intermittently over the past two days - thought that perhaps she didn't need to sleep, reminding her "you can sleep when you're dead."

Sam was dead.

"We're here," the cabbie grunted as they pulled up outside a decidedly small and rather grotty hotel. Myka blinked, twice, adjusting her sunglasses and climbing out of the taxi. She took her bag out of the cab herself this time, the cabbie watching enviously as she swung it with ease from the boot with one hand, the other absentmindedly handing him the fare.

"Ta love," he said, dropping fifty two pence change into her palm and driving away. Myka took the handle of her suitcase, walking through the automatic doors and into the hotel lobby. It was dark, the only sunlight coming through the glass of the doors, which for some reason were covered in grubby fingerprints and what Myka sincerely hoped was just ice-cream. There was a wilting potted plant in the corner. Myka thought it might once have been an Areca Palm, but it was stunted and the leaves were limp and dry and brown, and altogether it was just a very sad specimen.

Three dimly lit corridors branched off from the lobby, faded blue signs above the empty door frames reading "rooms 1 - 50", "rooms 51 - 99" and "rooms 100 - 125".

The reception desk stood just that; no human occupant in sight, probably either having curled up under the desk and died of boredom and vitamin D deficiency, or more likely, hiding in the back room with the radio and a cup of tea.

There was a grey cat sat disquietingly still next to the telephone, watching Myka with distrustful, yellow eyes.

Myka dinged the silver bell, the only thing in the lobby (apart from the cat) not covered in a thin layer of dust, and waited. In the corner there was a low coffee table that provided a selection of magazines; two overstuffed armchairs were placed beside it underneath the only light fitting, which was more of a very old and dusty light bulb with what looked like a piece of cardboard as a lampshade.

Leaving her suitcase to take care of itself, Myka wandered around the lobby, careful to avoid the magazines on the coffee table. She'd bought one from the W H Smith at the airport on a whim, it had been glossy and full of gossip and stick thin models and outrageous stories like "Beauty And The Brains: How My Neighbour Seduced Both Me And My Husband And Used Our Lawnmower To Solve A Murder."

Myka had thrown it in the bin and bought another coffee instead.

She heard a door open and turned to see a man in his early fifties - slender and haughty with grey hair and few residual good looks - enter the lobby, the door behind the reception desk swinging closed behind him. Myka could hear Radio 4 faintly over the sound of a kettle boiling.

"Yes?"

"Myka Bering," Myka said. "I've been booked a room for this week?"

The man nodded, tapping something on the keyboard and glancing at his computer screen. His name badge said "James MacPherson. Assistant Manager."

"Room 105," James MacPherson said, digging a silver key from a drawer and dropping it onto the desk, turning to walk through the door into the back room.

"Enjoy your stay," he added, almost as an afterthought as the door swung shut behind him.

"I'll try," Myka muttered, heading for the corridor marked "rooms 100 - 125," dragging her luggage behind her.

* * *

It didn't take her long to unpack. She was only staying for a week, her trip to London being more of a mandatory holiday, forced on her by the smiling faces and iron authority of her boss and therapist. "Rest and Recuperation," being the key ideals in light of recent events.

Huffing a sigh, she flopped onto the bed to test the mattress, which was unforgivingly solid beneath her. There was a clock on the wall opposite the bed, ticking too loudly in the quiet of the room. It read fourteen minutes past twelve. She supposed now was as good a time as any to get something to eat.

Glancing in the small mirror on the bedside table, noting the marked contrast between her pale face and the dark circles under her green eyes, she shrugged, ruffling unruly curls and shoving her phone in her back pocket (not that anyone would be willing to call her,) and left the room.

The cat was still there when she entered the lobby. Eyeing it warily, she exited through the automatic doors and onto the busy street. Preferring to wander aimlessly rather than hail a cab with no real destination in mind, she set off through the crowd, allowing herself to be carried along with the tide of single-minded business-people on their lunch breaks.

* * *

After fifteen minutes she was as hopelessly lost as a top government agent with an eidetic memory can be. This street was quieter than the last few, smaller, the only cars stationary and parked on the pavement.

A black cab pulled up further down the street, a man in a blue shirt and jeans getting out and disappearing under the red awning of a small eatery she hadn't noticed before. Myka followed him in the hopes of procuring a sandwich, and maybe a coffee or two.

* * *

The café was called Speedy's, and the man in the blue shirt was called Pete. He was a Detective-Inspector with the London Metropolitan Police, he said, flashing his badge and a goofy grin. She refrained from pulling her own Secret Service badge on him.

He was good-looking, she idly noticed, but even the absence of a wagging tail could not remove the image of an excited Labrador retriever from her mind. The student behind the counter handed him his toastie - cheese and ham, with lashings of tomato ketchup – and he continued talking, and talking, Myka not really listening, until her own order, a chicken salad sandwich and a large coffee, was ready.

"So what do you do?" he asked, American accent and mouth full of cheese and ham toastie, plopping down in the seat opposite her. She pointedly gazed around the near empty café, deserted bar a man in an expensive suit and violently bright orange tie, but graced Pete with an answer all the same.

"Security, mostly." It was her default answer; one can't really say "Secret Service" without being met with either scepticism or a plea to see her badge, she'd learnt.

"Oh yeah? Over here on a job?"

She shook her head, sipping at her coffee, enjoying the feeling of the liquid scalding her throat. "No. I'm on holiday, actually."

"Ah, a tourist." Myka noticed his slightly quirked eyebrow and the way he leaned forwards, and braced herself for the inevitable question.

"Do you need a city guide? I know all the coolest places in London." He seemed quite proud of that.

"No, thank you," she declined politely, hoping he wouldn't persist. Thankfully, he seemed to get it, shrugging it off and saying "Okay, maybe some other time."

He got up, scrunching up the greaseproof paper that had contained his lunch, and draining his glass of coke, the half melted ice cubes clinking against the bottom when he set it down again.

"Well, it was nice meeting you. Let me know if you need anyone to distract you from whatever it is you're going through."

Myka tried not to show how taken aback she was. Not flirting, and far more perceptive than she'd given him credit for. He really was just being friendly.

"Pete?" she called him back.

"Yeah?"

"Could you perhaps show me to the nearest bookstore?"

She felt her lips quirk upwards for the first time in a long time when he grinned, wiping grease from his hand and offering it to her.

* * *

He received a phone call just outside the big Waterstones, from The Met he said. They were working on a big case and needed all hands on deck. They'd even called in their consulting detective, whatever one of those was, but she hadn't shown and they had some new evidence, courtesy of an anonymous German. Myka was sure he shouldn't be telling her all of this, but what could she do with it, she wasn't a journalist.

So he left her with his number and a promise that she could call him whenever she needed to, and jumped in a cab whilst she waved once, and walked into the bookstore.

It was crowded, of course. Myka was glad that the invention of e-readers or whatever they were called hadn't totally killed the preference for the feel of paper and ink in one's hands, although perhaps the number of people was more in correlation with the café tucked into a corner on the second floor, boasting a myriad of different caffeinated beverages, than the need to exercise the mind with a novel or three.

She'd made it her purpose to enjoy this "holiday" as little as possible, some subconscious attempt to get back at her boss for insisting she take time off from her job. But she knew if she had to sit staring at the clock on the wall in the bedroom of her hotel for a week she'd probably end up talking to the cat just to stop herself from going insane.

The fiction section was at the opposite end of the store from the café, the noise of overly social human beings fading to a quiet hum. She let her eyes wander over the tightly packed spines in front of her, appreciating them almost like a lover would take the time to appreciate the naked form of their partner, eyes roving over curves and straight edges and allowing herself for one brief second to completely, shallowly but understandably, judge a book by the aesthetics of its cover.

"Myka?" She ignored the name, swatting it away like a fly as she continued to peruse the shelves.

"Myka Bering?" British flies were annoyingly persistent, although this was the second American accent she'd heard that day, not including her own, and something nagged at her. "You know this voice," it said, poking her repeatedly with a metaphorical stick. She told it to shut up and put the damn stick down, but when she felt a hand on her shoulder she resignedly turned around, just to see if it was right.

"Doctor Calder?"

The older woman smiled at her, drawing her in for a quick hug that Myka didn't have time to reciprocate.

"Vanessa, honey, I keep telling you."

"Sorry," Myka said as the doctor held her at arm's length. "It's hard to replace eighteen years usage of one name with another."

"No matter," Vanessa said, taking in the bags under Myka's eyes with a hint of a medic's disapproval.

"What have you been up to then? What brings you to London?"

"Holiday. And yourself?" Myka asked, returning the courtesy, ignoring the first question.

"I live and work here," the doctor replied. "I teach budding medical students the difference between an arse and an elbow at St Bart's Hospital."

Myka nodded distractedly, happy though she was to see an old friend, she was eager to leave. She could feel tiredness creeping in, a direct result most likely of the extraordinary amount of human company she'd faced today.

Vanessa's phone beeped, alerting her to a text. Excusing herself, she pulled her phone from her jacket pocket and checked it. Myka watched as her face turned puzzled. "What on earth can she possibly want with two dead bodies and a riding crop?"

She put her phone back in her pocket, turning to Myka. "I'm sorry, it looks like I'll have to leave you to your books, Helena's up to something and I don't think poor Claudia will be able to handle it on her own."

Myka was not concerned by Vanessa leaving, although something about the situation, whatever it was, intrigued her. So, despite her earlier promise to be resolutely bored with her holiday, she tucked her hair behind her ear and asked, "Would it be possible for me to, er, tag along? It's just I've not got anything to do and I don't think the cat at the hotel likes me very much, so…"

"Of course," Vanessa smiled. "I can sneak you in the back way. You'll probably enjoy this. Helena is a wonderfully interesting person once you get past all the," she struggled to find the right word, hands flapping as if to grasp one from the air, and eventually chose "weirdness. Come on, I'll get us a cab."

* * *

They were greeted at the door of the morgue by a dishevelled, twenty something lab tech with bright red hair and purple surgical gloves.

"Sorry Doc, I couldn't stop her wheeling old Mr Harris and Mrs Coombes out of the freezer. She insisted you told her she could have at them with a riding crop, something about a man's alibi depending on the bruises that formed." She jumped at a loud _thwack_ emanating from behind the morgue doors, gesturing with her thumb through the shatterproof glass inlaid into them. "I'm all for doing whatever it is you do that turns you on, but she is having _way_ too much fun with that riding crop."

Myka leaned forwards imperceptibly, trying to get a glimpse at what was going on but all she could see was the corner of a metal gurney and a cold, dead foot - belonging to, if she had to hazard a guess, old Mr Harris.

Vanessa was talking to the lab tech. "It's okay Claudia, I said she could do it. So long as she only picked patients who weren't having open casket funerals."

The red head shrugged, peeling off her gloves. "Well, whatever, I think it's time for my lunch break."

She noticed Myka. "Who's this? I'm Claudia, I fix stuff that people break."

"Myka Bering," Myka said, shaking the proffered hand. "I'm an old friend of Doctor Calder's."

"Oh, right. Cool. You staying long, need me to grab you a sandwich or something?"

Myka shook her head. "No thanks, I just ate."

"Good thing I guess. The food in the canteen is horrific. Sandwich Doc?" she asked Vanessa.

"Yes please. Ham, if you would."

Claudia saluted lazily and turned on her heel, wincing as the riding crop cracked against Mr Harris once again.

"She's young, sarcastic and has absolutely no respect for authority, but she'll go far." Doctor Calder said, indicating Claudia high-fiving a tired looking medical student. She held open one of the morgue doors and gestured for Myka to enter. "Let's go see what Helena is up to, shall we?"

* * *

Helena was slightly shorter than Myka, with raven black hair and a loose button-down shirt and her back to Doctor Calder and Myka as they came in. She was breathing heavily, shoulders rising and falling, a riding crop clutched in her right hand.

"Ah, Doctor Calder, my thanks for the use of these two bodies, they have been most wonderfully co-operative. Can I borrow your phone?"

Her voice was charming, Myka thought, melodic and smooth, and her accent was that kind of British you thoroughly expected every English person to possess, where sadly they almost never did.

"Why do you need my phone?" Vanessa asked and when Helena turned around to answer Myka felt the breath leave her lungs and had to fight to keep her eyes from falling out of her skull and crashing to the floor with her jaw because the woman that faced her was the most beautiful, breath-takingly stunning _woman_ she had ever seen.

"Because mine has no signal and I need to tell Artie something very important about his investigation."

"You can't use the morgue landline?" Vanessa asked, already rummaging in the pockets of her lab coat.

"I prefer to text."

"Well sorry but I appear to have left mine in my jacket pocket."

Helena shrugged, reaching over the body in front of her to the phone hanging on the morgue wall.

"You can borrow my phone," Myka piped up, awkwardly, fumbling in her back pocket for it. Helena looked at her, head cocked to the side and an unreadable expression on her face. She held out her hand wordlessly, and Myka handed the phone over.

"Thank you," Helena said, already typing. "How long ago did he die?" she asked, still looking at the screen. Myka felt her throat constrict, fought to keep her voice steady and her eyes dry. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Your fiancée, how long ago did he die?"

"Helena," Vanessa was watching Myka with compassion tinged with concern, her voice low, a warning. Myka's throat worked and she blinked rapidly, forcing out "Three weeks, three weeks today. His name was Sam."

Helena handed her back her phone, covering her shaking hands with her own for just a moment too long and saying "I'm sorry, truly." Her dark eyes met Myka's, conveying an unspoken understanding of loss, and for some reason Myka began to feel just a bit less sad, as if with one glance she had shared more of her burden with this intuitive woman she had never even met than her own therapist.

Myka coughed, slipping her phone back into her pocket, looking away, asking "How, err, how did you know? How could you possibly have known?"

Helena turned back to the body in front of her, taking a digital camera from the gurney and snapping a few pictures of Mr Harris's bruised ribs.

"Oh, it's obvious really." Her voice softened, and she began to explain, her words spilling quickly from her mouth like so many secrets. "Your hands. Specifically, the ring finger of your left hand. There is a very, very faint tan line where a ring would have been. Traditionally that is where one would wear an engagement ring, and given how faint the line is I'd hazard a guess at a recent proposal.

You've removed it, something you wouldn't have done had Sam been alive, or still with you." Myka thought of the ring, plain, and small, tucked away in her desk drawer at home.

"And your eyes," Helena was saying. "I've never seen so much sadness…" she trailed off, her own dark brown eyes meeting Myka's green, holding her gaze.

"They show your obvious tiredness. Now, that could be a result of a number of things but it is a key symptom of grief, especially when the sufferer feels in some way responsible for whatever happened."

Myka cut her off, waving her hands. "Okay, stop, stop. _How_ are you even doing that?" Even though Helena's words were bringing back memories so painful they made her stomach clench, Myka couldn't help but be fascinated by them, by the woman whose mouth they belonged to.

Helena shrugged, putting her camera down. "It's quite simple really. I have these things called eyes, they evolved specifically for the purpose of seeing it seemed a waste not to use them."

Myka's lips quirked upwards but she tried to keep her face straight as Helena's words sparked annoyance. Taking a step forward, almost into the shorter woman's personal space, she said "You're going to have to give me a better explanation than that."

Helena raised an eyebrow and graced Myka with a slight smile, leaning forwards slightly but not saying a word. Vanessa watched the two of them from the other side of the gurney, intrigued by the reaction each was eliciting in the other.

"Well-"was all Helena could manage before the morgue doors opened and Claudia came in, toting a ham sandwich and followed by, of all people, Detective-Inspector Pete Lattimer.

"Oh hey, Myka," he said, cocking his head to one side as he watched the two women stood by the gurney eyeballing each other. "Umm, what are you doing here; I thought you were in the bookshop?"

"I'm waiting for Miss Know-It-All here to explain how she knew so much about me thirty seconds after we met," was Myka's reply, not breaking her eye contact with Helena until Claudia pushed between them, wheeling Mr Harris away and muttering something about "It aint his time to decay just yet."

Pete shrugged, biting into a banana he'd magically produced from somewhere about his person. Claudia curled her lip in disgust, and pointed out "Room full of dead people, dude."

The Detective grimaced, dropping his banana in the bin labelled MEDICAL SUPPLIES ONLY. "She does that all the time," he said, referring to Helena's magical ability to guess a person's backstory in under a minute. "Never tells anyone how she does it, it's really annoying."

"Wait," Myka glanced between them. "You two know each other?"

"Helena Wells," the dark-haired woman extended a graceful hand to Myka, who shook it, surprised at how soft it was. "I work as a freelance consulting detective with The Met whenever they get out of their depth, which is always."

Pete looked like he was about to argue, then thought better of it, tucking his hands into his pockets. Myka still had hold of Helena's hand, so she dropped it, introducing herself as "Myka. Myka Bering. Agent, err, Bering." She scratched her nose.

"Agent?"

Myka kicked herself, gritting her teeth at the look on Pete's face. "Yeah, I was, am, Secret Service."

"Really? Can I see-"

"No, you cannot see my badge." She pretended to be busy watching Claudia and Vanessa returning the metal gurney upon which Mrs Coombes lay to the fridge, and Helena moving to take a few more photographs of her bruises.

"Artie says thanks for the help, by the way," Pete said, changing tack and nodding towards the body.

"Oh good. You've arrested the right man this time?"

"How were we supposed to know he was telling the truth about the bull whip?" Pete whined, holding up his hand to prevent Helena no doubt expounding at great length on the inability of the London Metropolitan Police to identify which suspect had been gagged and bound (consensually, of course,) at the time of the murder.

"Never mind, I don't want to know."

Helena picked up the riding crop, running her hands over its length absentmindedly and saying to Pete "So I'm assuming this visit has nothing to do with you wanting to spend time in my enjoyable company, and everything to do with the body that's turned up?"

"How..? No, I'm not even going to bother."

"Body?" Helena prompted.

Pete held up a finger. "Right. It's another suicide."

"Murder," Helena interrupted in a singsong voice, twirling the whip through her fingers.

"Artie says suicide," Pete said, sticking out his tongue at Helena, cutting her off when she tried to disagree. "He says there's nothing to suggest it's a murder, all four victims died of natural causes."

"Yes, exactly the same natural causes, all four within a week of each other. Don't you think that's a bit suspicious?"

The detective shrugged, putting his hand back in his pocket. "Maybe, I guess." He sighed. "Alright, it's beginning to look like murder. It's why we need you to come in."

Helena shook her head, tucking the riding crop beneath her arm and her hands into her own pockets. Myka, stood a little way off where the gurney on which Mr Harris had lain had stood just moments before, could see the dark-haired woman fiddling restlessly with something in her right pocket.

"I don't like the Met HQ," she was saying. "Too many people telling you what to do, and then offering you coffee and a biscuit in the same breath_._"

Pete looked exasperated, throwing his hands up in the air in defeat. "It's what people do to be polite HG –"

"Ooh, HG," Helena teased. "No one's called me that in a long time."

"Wait," Myka interrupted. "Your name is HG Wells?"

Helena grinned at her. "Yes, technically. Wonderful isn't it? I love his books. The Time Machine is a favourite of mine."

Myka nodded in agreement, her own smile crossing her face although she didn't really know why. Perhaps just glad she'd found a somewhat kindred spirit. Pete coughed, raising an eyebrow at Helena. HG. Myka preferred Helena.

"So if you won't come in to the station, do pray tell us" (here he imitated Helena's accent, albeit a little more exaggerated) "how you're going to solve these 'murders'." He removed his hands from his trouser pockets to draw quotation marks in the air, Helena's dark eyes following and then rolling in their sockets.

The consulting detective finally dropped the whip onto a stainless-steel table that housed two microscopes, a copy of the Lancet medical journal, a model of the brain - colour-coded and with removable bits, and four empty mugs of coffee.

"Take me to the crime scene, Detective Lattimer."

* * *

The crime scene was a flat, old, crumbling, the area outside fenced off with blue and white tape and police officers milling about doing who knew what. Myka tucked a curl or two behind her ear, climbing from the taxi behind Helena who was already out and striding across the cracked concrete to the flat.

"Umm, Helena?"

"Yes?"

Myka hurried to catch up. "What exactly am I doing here again?"

The shorter woman stopped, cocking her head to one side in deliberation. "Err, let's see. Because despite not wanting to enjoy your holiday in the slightest way, you are more than a little bored and would much rather watch me at work. Although you aren't going to admit that to yourself anytime soon."

"And what are you going to tell the policewoman in charge of letting people in and out of the crime scene?"

They started walking again, moving nearer to the police-line-do-not-cross tape flapping in the slight breeze. The sun was starting to set behind the old block of flats and Myka had to squint at the officer who held out a hand to stop them.

"Helena Wells," Helena said. "And this is my associate, Agent Bering."

"I know who you are," the officer sniffed, curling her lip. She turned to Myka. "Associate huh? Can I see some identification?"

"Well, I haven't got my badge with me right now…" The officer folded her arms, shifting her weight to her back foot and raising an eyebrow. "Maybe I should just wait here," Myka mumbled.

"Nope," Helena held up the tape so Myka could walk underneath. "I need her Detective Donovan," she said to the officer. They hurried away before Detective Donovan could open her mouth.

Inside it was dank and grim. Forensics people passed them, carrying samples and silver cases, and dressed in blue boiler suits that rustled when they walked. They were met by Detective Lattimer, who held out a boiler suit each to both Helena and Myka and said "Put these on."

Myka took hers but Helena just gave Pete a withering look and snapped on a pair of purple latex gloves. "Where's the body?"

* * *

She was lying face down on the hardwood floor. Mildew coated the walls, a faintly unpleasant smell pervading the air and causing Myka to wrinkle her nose.

The woman was dressed head to toe in a stylishly cut, pink two-piece suit, her blond hair, once neatly piled on top of her head, had come lose, settling over her pale face and closed eyes. One hand was stretched out in front of her, the fingers cut and the blood long dried. The word "Rache," she had carved into the wooden floorboards.

Helena crouched over the body, delicately reaching out to examine the dead woman's right hand. Myka watched her slip off her wedding ring, twirl it thoughtfully before putting it back. She ran her finger under the collar of the pink jacket, slipped a folded white umbrella from her pocket. Then she stood up and checked her own phone.

"Got anything?" Pete asked.

Helena just shrugged, still clicking away on her mobile. Myka counted eight seconds before her mouth opened and her words slipped out, as fast and assured as ever. "She's from Cardiff, intending to stay in London for one night only."

"Cardiff?"

"Yes, quite obvious really. Her jacket is wet, she's been in heavy rain in the last few hours. Under her collar is also wet, she's turned it up against the wind. Her umbrella however, is dry, indicating a strong wind." She waved her phone in front of Pete's face. "No strong wind or rain in London in the past few hours, so not from here. The only place she could have come from with that kind of weather in the last few hours is Cardiff."

"That's fantastic," Myka said, completely in awe of the woman's deductive skills.

Helena gave her a look. "Do you have to do that out loud?"

"Sorry."

"Okay," Pete interrupted, indicating the word the woman had scratched into the floor. "What about that?"

"Agent Bering, what do you think?"

"What, me?"

"Yes, you."

Myka rubbed her eyes, regretting leaving her glasses back at the hotel. The room was lit only by a single floodlight, and the harsh glare wasn't doing much for her vision. "Well, err, Rache means revenge in German, maybe it's some sort of message?"

"Good try but no." She turned to address Pete. "Where's her suitcase?"

"What suitcase? There was no suitcase."

"Oh come one, she was staying the night, coming all the way from Cardiff at this hour, she had to have had a suitcase. Look at the splash marks from the wheels on her legs. It was probably as garish a shade of pink as her coat. Has one of your forensics people taken it?"

"HG there was no suitcase."

A funny look crossed her face and quietly she said "Say that again."

"There was no suitcase."

Helena strode from the room, coat flying behind her, yelling "Suitcase, has anyone seen a suitcase?"

Pete ran after her, Myka following. Helena was already halfway down the stairs by the time they left the room. "Helena there is no suitcase!"

"Well where is it then, did it grow wings and fly away?"

"How do you know she didn't just check into a hotel and leave it there?" Pete called.

She stopped, one leg in mid-air halfway to the next step. "No she came straight here, look at her hair, she'd never have left a hotel looking like that. Someone must have driven her here." She clapped her hands, bouncing excitedly on the step. "The killer must have driven her here. All four victims died of the same poison. Detective Lattimer I do believe we have a serial killer." Myka thought she looked far too happy about that.

Helena was running down the stairs again. "I love serial killers," Myka heard her say as she hurried to keep up. "Always something to look forwards to. Hard, you have to wait for them to make a mistake. But he already has, hasn't he."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Pete was saying. They had almost reached the ground floor; Helena was already at the door.

"The killer must have taken her case with him. Detective Lattimer, get on to Cardiff, I want you to find out who this woman is and what Rachel means to her."

"Rachel?"

Helena had to door open, she paused to call "Yes Rachel, she wasn't leaving a message in German, she was leaving a message for someone called Rachel. Find her; I'm going to find the suitcase."

"But you said the killer took it!"

"Look, Pete. Really look at the body. Taking that case was the killer's most elementary mistake."

"What the hell do you mean?"

"PINK!" Helena yelled and bolted out the door, leaving it to click quietly shut behind her.

* * *

Helena had gone by the time she and Pete had reached the ground floor. The detective had offered her a lift home, but she'd declined, preferring to walk instead. The streets were busy, it was only half past seven. She passed a fish and chip shop, ignoring the sound of her stomach rumbling, the ringing of the public phone on the wall, the smell of cod and chips assaulting her senses.

A taxi, two, three, drove past and she ignored them. The red public phone box to her right rang and she ignored that too. Then stopped, turned, picked up the handset and answered "Hello?"

"Myka Bering?" A male voice, accent like HG's but far less likeable on the end of the line said. Myka almost dropped the phone, gripped it tighter, her knuckles white.

"Yes?" Her voice was almost a whisper.

"Look to your left. Do you see the security camera on top of the building?" Myka looked, saw it pointed at her, watched as it slowly pivoted away to face the opposite side of the busy street.

"Now look over the road. To the side of the restaurant." Another camera turned away. A black car pulled up smoothly beside the phone box. "Please get into the car Miss Bering."

"I'm a trained Secret Service agent," Myka breathed into the handset.

"This is about Helena Wells. Please get into the car, _Agent_ Bering."

Myka placed the phone back in its cradle, leaving the phone box and the relative security she felt within and climbing into the car.

* * *

Settling onto the soft black leather seat, she pulled the door closed and the car pulled away from the pavement. There was a woman, a pretty, office type of woman, the light from her blackberry screen highlighting her sharp features as she concentrated on what she was texting.

Myka coughed. The woman stopped texting and looked up expectantly. "Umm, where are we going?"

"You'll see," was the reply, and she went back to typing. Myka sighed and looked out of the window. It had started to rain and water flecked the window, changing colour with the glow of the streetlamps and the traffic lights they passed.

* * *

They arrived at a warehouse. It was a huge, cold space, the concrete floor wet with rain dripping from the ceiling. Myka saw a lone wooden chair and resolved to avoid it. The car pulled up and the woman, who hadn't said another word for the whole journey, opened the door for her. Myka had half a mind to snatch the phone and recommend her a few good books but she wasn't entirely sure why she was here and perhaps irritating this woman would only get her killed more quickly.

There was a man waiting beside the chair. He was tall, bald, and standing with his back to her. Myka saw he was leaning on a black umbrella.

"Agent Bering." He greeted her, but did not turn around. His voice was the one that had been on the other end of the phone.

"Where's Helena?" Myka asked, getting straight to the point. She hated making small talk with people who kidnapped her. Sadly it happened all too often in her line of work, and all they ever did was go on and on about how clever they were and what their plans were, and they had the nerve to look surprised when she broke out and arrested them.

"Oh probably off gallivanting about somewhere trying to solve a murder, no doubt."

"You said she was here."

He shook his head. "I said this meeting was about her." He turned around. Myka thought he looked to be in his forties, well-built and wearing an expensive suit. He indicated the chair. "Take a seat."

"I'd prefer to stand."

A small smile graced his features. "We are not going to torture you Agent Bering."

"That's what they all say," she replied, and took the small snort of air he expelled from his nose as laughter.

"I hear you accompanied Helena to a crime scene this evening."

Myka shrugged, noting the distance to the exits, wondering if the driver, the woman in the backseat, or this mysterious man had guns.

"I'll cut to the chase," he said. "I'm willing to offer you a large sum of money in exchange for information on Helena's movements. Neither of you will be harmed, I just want to know what she's up to."

"Find someone else. I don't know where she is or whether I'll even see her again. To be honest I'm only here for a week then I'm going home. But I wouldn't sell her out to you."

The man shrugged, gloved fingers tapping against the handle of his umbrella. "A shame. Although apparently she's taken quite a shine to you. I wouldn't be surprised if she turned up on your doorstep in the middle of the night and dragged you off for an adventure." He smiled demurely.

"You seem to know quite a bit about her."

"Yes," was his reply. "Helena and I have known each other a very long time. She of course refers to me as her arch enemy."

Myka raised an eyebrow. "People have arch enemies?"

"Helena does."

Myka folded her arms, shifting her weight. "And what is it you've done to her to earn that title?"

"Frankly my dear, I have no idea." He lifted his umbrella and rested it on his shoulder. "I'll be in touch. So will Helena. You're free to go."

"Wait. Why do you want to spy on her?"

He gave her a look she couldn't interpret. "Because I'm worried about her." With that he turned on his heel and strode towards the door set in the wall of the warehouse, the heels of his polished shoes clicking against the damp concrete.

Myka took a deep breath and slipped back into the car.

"Where do you need to go?" The woman opposite asked. Myka gave her the name of the hotel and off they went into the night.

* * *

It was a little after nine when they arrived. The black car drove away as she entered the lobby, the automatic doors hissing as they opened. She wandered past the cat, still perched on the desk, ignoring its critical gaze as she meandered up the hall to room 105.

The clock on the hotel wall ticked slowly towards midnight, too slowly for Myka's liking. She lay awake in bed, blaming her sleeplessness on the silence of the room, the ticking of the clock, the thickness of the night around her pressing down on her open, unseeing eyeballs.

She could hear the cat, purring incessantly outside her room. Maybe she could blame her sleeplessness on that.

She replayed the events of the day in her head, forcing away the fading memories of Sam's face and replacing them with ones of Helena. She remembered watching the woman crouched over the corpse on the floor, lost in easy concentration as she examined it.

Perhaps what the man in the empty warehouse had said was true, maybe Helena would come back for her. She couldn't decide if that as a good or a bad thing.

At first, as she lay in the dark remembering Helena bent over the body of Mrs Coombes in the morgue, taking pictures and questioning Pete, she passed off the tapping on her door as the tapping of a branch against her window - despite her room being on the ground floor, her window facing out onto a small concrete back yard filled with overflowing bins.

It was only when she heard that stunning accent, low voice drifting through the thin door, "Myka," a forceful whisper, "Agent Bering," did she sit up, fumbling for the light switch.

The door opened to reveal Helena Wells, her arms around the grey cat purring contentedly as the fingers of her left hand played over its skull, tickling its whiskers. Myka leaned against the frame, watching as she set the cat down and smoothly stood up.

"His name is Dickens."

"MmmHmm."

"James let me name him when I was staying here a few years ago."

"MmmHmm."

"Are you just going to make backchannel noises until I tell you what I'm doing here at this late hour?"

Myka nodded. "MmmHmm."

"I couldn't find you when I got back to the crime scene. Pete said you'd gone home, but he didn't know where that was."

"So you found out?"

"So I found out."

Myka sighed, standing aside and gesturing for Helena to enter the room. "Come in and sit down." She followed the smaller woman, the bed dipping under their combined weights and the door shutting behind them. Myka propped the pillows up against the wall, leaning back and tucking her feet under the duvet, hugging her knees to her chest.

She watched as Helena unzipped her knee-length boots, leaving them on the floor and folding her legs underneath herself, facing Myka. "I wanted to thank you for your help at the crime scene."

"I answered the one question you asked me wrong and then just stood there awkwardly."

Helena waved her statement away and said "Whatever. Actually, I wanted to ask if you would come and live with me."

Myka just stared.

"I know you're only here for a short amount of time but I'm a little behind on my rent. Okay, a lot behind on my rent."

"You want me to stay in your house for a week and help pay your rent?"

Helena let her hair fall to the side as she cocked her head. "Yes, pretty much."

"Okay."

"What?"

"Okay, I'll come live with you."

"Well that was extraordinarily easy."

Myka shrugged. "I need to do something with the money. And that clock is far too loud. And Dickens hates me. But I'll only go on one condition."

"Which is?" Helena asked, a smile threatening to cross her perfect features.

"I get to help in any way I can to solve this case."

" Done." Helena brushed her hair back, grinning. "You've gotten a taste for it."

Myka got off the bed, reaching underneath it for her suitcase. "You could say that."

* * *

Her clothes were packed in less than ten minutes. Helena waited outside, bouncing Dickens on her knee as Myka changed in the bathroom. They left a note for Mr MacPherson explaining she had gone and that she wouldn't be coming back, so could he please cancel her room booking.

The clouds drifted apart to let the moon shine down on them as the automatic doors hissed open. "Your arch enemy told me you'd be in touch," Myka said as Helena hailed a cab.

"Did he now? I suppose he offered you money to keep an eye on me?"

"Yes. He said he was worried about you. I turned him down."

"Shame, we could have split the cash between us. Take it next time." Helena finally flagged down a passing cab. The black taxi came to a halt in front of them, and they got in. Myka wanted to ask who it was Helena considered her arch nemesis, but the cabbie was already asking Helena where she wanted to go.

"221B Baker Street, please."

* * *

AN: This will be in two parts, because it was getting bloody long, but I don't know when I'll get the second part up because I still have 1000 words of EPQ to write, plus my other fics, so bear with me if you would. Thanks for reading.


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